Tumor Metastasis is a series of several sequential steps started by invasion of individual cells, which are named circulating tumor cells (CTCs), into the bloodstream. CTCs are originated from the primary tumor, and their enumeration procedures are known to be reliable methods in cancer staging and therapy monitoring, such as minimal residual disease (MRD). The number of CTCs has a good correlation with various clinical time points, such as overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS).
Less than 5 CTCs is found per 1 ml of a blood sample taken from a cancer patient with a high survival rate. There are practical difficulties in detecting such rare cells among billions of red blood cells (RBCs) and millions of white blood cells (WBCs). Therefore, CTC detection often requires complicated blood enrichment steps.
Therefore, there is a need for an integrated system or method capable for both isolating and detecting the CTCs in a blood sample to diagnose the cancerous state or metastatic state at early stages of cancer progression.